Pulling out all the stops
After pipe organ restoration, a concert at St. Luke’s Church tonight
SARANAC LAKE — The rich and dulcet tones of the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church organ reverberated off the wood and stained glass inside the sanctuary on Wednesday as visiting organist David Jackson played the final sustained notes of the hymn “Be Thou My Vision” while rehearsing with visiting pianist Bill Hughes.
Members of the public will be able to hear the recently restored organ in action today at a 7 p.m. concert of “sacred and secular music” in the church on the corner of Main and Church streets.
Jackson is traveling from Spencer in the Southern Tier for the occasion. He’s been a longtime friend of the St. Luke’s Church and its members.
Jackson said the organ had been in pretty bad shape before, with dead notes from electronic connections gone bad, pipes in need of cleaning of dust and bugs and a tune-up.
The organ was donated to the church in 1994 by Ransom “Ranny” Duncan.
Last year, the church held a fundraiser for the organ and commissioned Ithaca-based organist Richard Strauss to refurbish the instrument. Strauss died in April at the age of 74. Syracuse-based Kerner and Merchant Pipe Organ Builders finished the restoration.
“Their work has brought the organ’s voice back to its former glory,” Susan Olsen wrote in a church newsletter.
This company also maintains the organ at St. John’s-in-the-Wilderness in Paul Smiths.
Strauss was a friend of Jackson, as well as Hughes and page turner Bill Denton who have traveled from Indiana for the concert. For decades, this group camped on Weller Pond with members of St. Luke’s like Mary Brown and Dianne Tkach.
Brown said, for them, this concert will be a tribute to their friend Strauss, as well as the other people who have shared musical expertise, generosity and love with the St. Luke’s community by maintaining and playing the organ over the years, including David Talbot and Frank Jacobsen, who died in 2021.
There is no charge for the concert, but a free-will offering will be taken, to support the organ’s continued maintenance.
Jackson started playing piano at age 12. When his church got a donated organ with free lessons, his minister put him on duty learning to play it.
“I ended up enjoying it,” he said.
The organ carries a massive variety of tones and sounds, imitating several other instruments like woodwinds, brass, percussion and strings. The cockpit of the instrument has an array of ways to change the tone, volume, length, pitch and intensity of each note.
The organ console, where Jackson sits amid three boards of keys, dozens of organ stops, foot pedals and buttons, is across the stage from the pipes, which are recessed into a wall — shining in the light and obscured in the shadows. Electric wiring connects the two portions of the instrument.
The whole operation is a complex system of technology.
A solid state computer system controls the valves on the pipes.
Every organ is different, Jackson said. Their customizable nature leads to countless iterations.
The pipes produce a full and surrounding sound, nearly commanding reverence and reflection.
The program for tonight’s concert includes orchestral pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach and hymns like “It Is Well With My Soul” and “O Praise Ye The Lord,” where the audience will be invited to stand and sing.